After regularising the publication of results over the past few years, the state Higher Secondary (HS) Council may face difficulties in announcing the results of the current year’s HS examination in time.

According to sources in the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, the process of preparing the results of this year’s HS exams, that ended last month, may get delayed because this year, head-examiners are likely to take longer to recheck the evaluations made by the examiners. The head-examiners have decided to re-examine each and every answer-script more carefully than in the previous years.

A recent high court order asking the Council authorities to impose a fine of Rs 50,000 on a head-examiner in Arabic has prompted them to be extra careful. An aggrieved HS examinee had challenged his Arabic paper marks in court last year.

The head-examiner was fined because court proceedings had revealed that the examinee was awarded much lower marks than he deserved.

The examiner who corrected the answer-script had awarded low marks and the head-examiner, too, had overlooked this while rechecking the script.

“The recent court order has set a precedent and it is not unlikely that more aggrieved students will go to court if they are not satisfied with the marks awarded to them. In such a situation, we have to be very careful and ensure that the scripts get evaluated correctly. We may go bankrupt if more wrong evaluations are detected, we (the head-examiners) are held responsible and asked to pay such huge fines by the court,” said a head-examiner in mathematics.

The head-examiners alleged that the Council’s decision to appoint all Higher Secondary teachers as examiners, irrespective of the number of years one has taught, has contributed to the problem.

Till last year, only HS teachers who have taught for a particular number of years were appointed examiners.

“This decision of the Council to assign inexperienced teachers to examine scripts has increased the chances of faulty evaluation. So, we have to be more careful this time,” said a head-examiner in English.

Dibyendu Chakraborty, Council secretary, said efforts were on to ensure that the results were published within the scheduled time — within 90 days of completion of an examination.